MONDAY VIEW: Why politics is slowing down UK broadband

So, after months of political wrangling, the land-line levy has been shelved. This was a proposed charge of 50p a month on each UK phone line to help deliver super-fast broadband to the 'last third' of the UK, writes BT chief executive Ian Livingston.

The levy will return if Labour is re-elected but will be scrapped if the Conservatives win with the funds potentially being raised at a later date through other means. What's the best approach?

That is a question for the politicians. All I will say is that the uncertainty is frustrating.

Race for speed: BT chief executive Ian Livingston has led a £1.5bn investment into fibre-optic broadband

BT is making one of Europe's biggest private sector investments in fibre-optic - £1.5bn - yet we are doing so without the public sector financial backing seen in other countries.

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I am sure that support will come in time but we can't afford to stand still. As a result, BT will press on and deliver fibre-optic broadband as quickly as it can.

Four million homes will have access by the end of this year and ten million by the London Olympics. This is one of the most ambitious rollouts in Europe, but we want to go further.

To go that 'extra mile' will require the government to play a role. This is because the commercial case for rolling out fibre-optic to the 'last third' of the UK simply doesn't stack up.

The costs are simply too high per household and so some support will be required for rural areas that are difficult and expensive to reach.

The political debate therefore boils down to when funds should be available to help rural areas get superfast broadband. BT would like to get services to as many homes as possible as quickly as possible. But this is in the hands of the politicians.

The good news is that the UK is in a strong position and so the debate is about how we get even stronger.

Let's look at the facts. There's no doubt that the UK is one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world. One only needs to look at the adverts in every paper to see how many companies are fighting for customers.

This competition has led to some of the lowest prices and highest take up of any major economy. Close to 20 million homes use broadband today and first generation services are available to more than 99 per cent of homes.

Speed is the new buzzword though. The UK lags behind some Asian nations in this sprint for ever faster download speeds.

South Korea, for example, has been helped by more proactive government support and the fact that many more of its citizens live in apartment blocks, which makes it much cheaper to provide fibre-optic technology to households.

There is a risk though that by focusing on fibre-optic alone we leave large parts of the UK without adequate speed.

We largely avoided this with the first generation of broadband - by ensuring the vast majority of homes had sufficient speed for email access, iPlayer etc - but video services are demanding greater bandwidth. Broadband is changing and the industry needs to respond.

That's why we're rolling out advanced copper broadband to 75 per cent of homes as well as deploying fibre-optic to more than 10m homes.

These parallel programmes will ensure most homes have access to much higher speeds whilst public sector funds have been promised to help those homes which currently experience speeds below two megabits per second.

If everything is so healthy, you may ask why extra funds are needed? The answer is that they're required if rural areas are to get fibre-optic. They're also important if the UK is to keep pace with other countries who are investing heavily.

One billion pounds of support, which could come from a variety of sources, spread over a number of years would encourage the private sector to invest a multiple of that number.

This may seem a lot but it pales in comparison with the sums being spent by overseas governments or indeed the funds that have been devoted to the water networks or ploughed into transport.

In conclusion, 2010 promises to be an exciting year. Speeds are getting faster, fibre-optic is being rolled out to 80,000 houses a week and new video services are being developed.

The UK can go further however if others join BT to ensure the UK is one of the leaders in the next broadband revolution. What the industry needs though is some certainty to allow it to plan for the future - whoever wins in May.